Join us in Stockport on Tuesday 16th September when we welcome award-winning author, broadcaster and journalist Damian Barr to the shop to discuss his new book The Two Roberts - a captivating and beautiful novel about art, class and queer love based on the true story of working class artists Robert Colquhoun and Bobby MacBryde. Damian will be in conversation with author and poet Andrew McMillan and the talk will be followed by an audience Q&A and book signing.

Tickets are £5.00 each or £18.99 including a copy of The Two Roberts. Light refreshments are included in the ticket price.

Event starts at 6:30pm (doors at 6pm)

About the book:

Meet Robert MacBryde and Robert Colquhoun: artists, lovers, outsiders. From 1930s Glasgow to wartime London, The Two Roberts is a captivating love story, inspired by the true story of their wild lives.

Scotland, 1933. Bobby MacBryde is on his way. After years grafting at Lees Boot Factory, he's off to the Glasgow School of Art, to his future. On his first day he will meet another Robert, a quiet man with loose dark curls – and never leave his side.

Together they will spend every penny and every minute devouring Glasgow – its botanical gardens, the Barras market, a whole hidden city – all the while loving each other behind closed doors. With the world on the brink of war, their unrivalled talent will take them to Paris, Rome, London. They will become stars as the bombs fall, hosting wild parties with the likes of Lucian Freud, Francis Bacon and Elizabeth Smart. But the brightest stars burn fastest.

Stunningly reimagined, The Two Roberts is a profoundly moving story of devotion and obsession, art and class. It is a love letter to MacBryde and Colquhoun, the almost-forgotten artists who tried to change the way the world sees – and paid a devastating price.

"Working-class life and artistic Bohemia collide in this novel of all-consuming passion and the torture of creation. Brilliantly written, poignant and powerful. This is Damian Barr's chef-d'oeuvre" - Ian Rankin

"The Two Roberts is the greatest and truest story of two male lovers I have ever read. A masterpiece. The celebration of these men while staring down their every relentless failing is world class. What an act of the imagination! It's wonderful, beautiful, heartbreaking, inspiring, honest, true, vital and magnificent. They live, they love, they fight, they sing, they fight naked and drunk, this is truly a literary miracle to look at these men and create them anew with such love, but such a tough, cold eye too" - Russell T Davies

About the author:

Damian Barr is an award-winning writer, broadcaster and journalist.

His memoir Maggie & Me, won Stonewall Writer of the Year and Sunday Times Memoir of the Year. His debut novel, You Will Be Safe Here, was shortlisted for six major awards and named a Book of the Year in the Observer, Guardian and Mail. He has written columns for The Times and Sunday Times and hosted Front Row on BBC Radio 4 as well as his own series Guide Books. In 2019, Damian brought books back to television with the Big Scottish Book Club, now in its sixth series and syndicated internationally. Also on BBC TV, he presented Shelf Isolation and the landmark documentary for Sir Walter Scott's 250th.

Damian holds a PhD in Creative Writing from Lancaster University and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. His world-famous Literary Salon ran from 2008 to 2023, celebrating writers from around the world and widening the cultural conversation. He is a trustee of Gladstone's Library and a campaigner for libraries. He lives in Brighton.

Andrew McMillan was born in Barnsley in 1988. His debut collection of poetry, physical, was 'the sort of once-in-a-generation debut that causes everyone to sit up and take notice' according to Sarah Crown. physical was the only poetry book to ever win the Guardian First Book Award; it was also awarded a Somerset Maugham award, an Eric Gregory Award, the Aldeburgh First Collection Prize and in 2019 was voted as one of the Top 25 Poetry Books of the Past 25 Years by the Booksellers Association. His second collection, playtime, won the inaugural Polari Prize. A third collection, pandemonium, was published in 2021 and in 2022 he co-edited the acclaimed anthology 100 Queer Poems, which was shortlisted in the British Book Awards. He is professor of contemporary writing at Manchester Metropolitan University and a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.